I had a nice chat with a friend about The Tunnel and the End of the Tunnel initiatives via email, and it turned into something of a Q&A session. Now it’s turned into a blog entry. I admit, I had to clean it up a little for the kiddies and add a little punctuation. His name is Chris, but I call him Faust.
FAUST:
So, what’s the project all about? Are you screaming from the rooftops to raise awareness?
ME:
Something you’re going to discover about the End of the Tunnel website is that it is a different environment from the “raising awareness” environment created by other sites with similar goals. Raising awareness, really means combating the general ignorance people have regarding a subject. A lot of—I guess we’ll just call them causes—have the same ultimate goal, which is to raise money. We all say we want to raise awareness, but you can’t feed people in Africa simply by making the rest of the world “aware” that people in Africa are hungry. Still, the mantra is, raising awareness.
This effort fights a special kind of plight—one that can actually be helped simply through awareness—complete awareness, education, and understanding. As people come to truly understand the “why” behind the epidemic of homelessness, there’s a change in the way they act toward it. This is important to get across to everyone, so there’s a good chance that you’re going to feel like you’re being talked to as if you’re kind of clueless, because, for most people, that’s pretty accurate. Maybe that’s not you. Maybe you’re a lot more “aware” than most. If so, you’ll have to be patient in understanding that the general disposition of the site is one that seeks to educate, and by definition, that implies the assumption of ignorance.
FAUST: I like that. It’s as simple as the notion that homelessness means you don’t have a home. “To learn” means that you didn’t already know. Is that insulting? Not to me. I’m just not completely up to speed on the subject, and maybe that’s why I’d be on the site in the first place—to learn.
ME: I hope so. Some people, however, just want to solve the problem with a few bucks a month and then pat themselves on the back for being a part of the solution, never taking the time to read and understand more about the situation. When that happens, I call that a fail, because we fail in our goal, which is to educate.
FAUST: Ok, so what’s the difference between giving money directly to a panhandler and giving money to an organization which combats homelessness.
ME: Well, first we have to assume the panhandler is actually homeless, and not someone who’s just found a way to make easy money while they’re living rent free in their Uncle’s guest house.
I think the easiest way to put it in perspective is to imagine a man—a chronic gambler—standing outside of a casino. You can’t tell that he’s a chronic gambler just by looking at him. He’s clearly down on his luck—that you can see by his appearance. How did he get into this predicament? We don’t really know, for sure, so let’s put a sign on him that says “Chronic Gambler” so there’s no mistaking the circumstances. Now, this guy’s asking for ten bucks so he can get some lunch. What are you going to do? Are you going to give ten bucks to a chronic gambler standing outside a casino? Probably not, but what if he was standing 200 feet away from the casino? Is that far enough away to suggest that he’s not going to go put that money into a slot machine? What if he was five hundred feet away? How far away from the obvious source of his continued demise would he have to be in order to negate your concern that he might just take that money and go blow it?
So, you outsmart the situation, right? You guy buy a gift card at the nearest fast food joint, and give that to him. He can’t just gamble that away. Good job! What are you going to do tonight when he’s hungry again? Are you going to go back and find him again, or rely on the kindness of someone else to get him another gift card? It doesn’t matter what you do—let’s play this out. You spend five or ten bucks a day feeding one homeless guy, and he’s hungry again in five hours. He gets two or three people to buy him food, and ten more people to give him cash to feed his addiction. He’s good.
Congratulations. You and eleven other people have just enabled a guy with a gambling addiction to maintain his lifestyle and literally nothing has changed. How long are you going to do that, a year? Let’s say you did that for a year. Twelve people gave him five bucks a day for 365 days and his life hasn’t changed a bit. Here’s the thing—a block down the street, there’s a fifty-eight year-old widow who has no work experience and can’t find a job. She lives in a Buick Enclave, and she’s been getting money begging from other generous people too, but she’s used it to pay for her insurance premiums and make payments on the credit cards she maxed out to keep her head above water during the first four months after her husband committed suicide. But she lost the house in the end, and now she’s wishing she had children when she had the chance.
How do you feel about the $21,900 you and the other eleven generous people gave to the gambler over the past year? Of course, 22 grand isn’t enough to call it a decent living in America today, but it’s tax-free income, and more than enough to stay well-fed, and to feed a healthy addiction as well. Why would he change what he’s doing?
FAUST: A Buick Enclave, huh? That’s pretty specific. Has the widow been keeping the same pace? She’d probably be doing a lot better than him.
ME: Sure. She’s been eating. She’s been squirreling away what she can after paying down her credit card balances, paying her insurance premiums, and putting gas in her car. She’s thinking, in a few years, she should be able to get into a cheap apartment… that is, if she can find a job. By age 70, she’ll be safely off the street.
FAUST: It seems like there are place for people to go who find themselves in situations like this. You know, like shelters. I can see how two people could be living in the same conditions but with totally different circumstances. I feel like I’m paying enough in taxes that these people should be able to find help when they need it.
ME: They can. The point is that people are different. Their situations are different. Their attitudes are different. Their aptitudes are different. Institutions which specialize in causes are far better financed, making them capable of far bigger changes in people’s lives. So, while you, yourself, may come into contact with a handful of needy people on your daily commute, churches and governments have access to greater numbers of people—or rather, greater numbers of people have access to them.
The problem is, churches and governments are also run by people who are not, and probably have never been, homeless. They’re likely only a little bit more knowledgeable than I was prior to hitting the streets. They spend money on grand, feel-good programs aimed at making it look like the money their congregations and constituents provided has been making life better for homeless people and addressing the issue of homelessness as a high priority. Then, we end up with things like “shower trailers” which allow hundreds of homeless people to bathe once a year.
FAUST: Awesome.
ME: Yeah.
To put that in perspective, New York City currently has a squatter problem where people are moving into people’s houses, creating bogus leases, and refusing to allow the rightful owners to retake possession without going through the months-long process of lawful eviction. Similar “squatter’s rights” laws exist in other states as well, so it’s becoming a big issue for local governments all over the place. In response to this issue of homeless people moving into other people’s homes, an idea has been floated suggesting that, in order to show the voting public that the problem is being taken very seriously, the cities should instigate programs whereby the homeless squatters can all get mani-pedi’s.
FAUST: LOL.
ME: Such is the genius behind the shower trailers. Larger projects are underway as well. Many cities are constructing or renovating massive housing structures to help give homeless people a place to live. Let’s be perfectly honest, though,—the main concern is giving them a place to poop. There are other concerns as well, like having a place to do drugs rather than out in public, getting them out of public places and public transportation, condensing them into a smaller area where they can be better studied, and creating the illusion of reducing homelessness, but the main concern is getting the human waste under control—that’s what really irks voters the most.
FAUST: I do hate the feces on the sidewalks. Better here than San Fran, though. So what’s the plan then? We give that money to your thing instead of giving directly to the people on the corner?
ME: If you really want to help address homelessness more specifically, more directly, and more permanently, your best bet is to find an organization which specializes in treating the symptoms and preventing the causes of homelessness. Here’s the thing: you still have the possibility that the organization may be spreading their resources too thin. If their plan aims to “end homelessness,” the goal is impossible, and the majority of the money will be wasted in much the same way as handing out small bills to problem gamblers, only in far greater numbers. As mentioned, giving small amounts of money, or even large amounts, to people who aren’t going to use it to their best advantage, is a waste of money regardless of its source.
FAUST: So then, your plan is different than other organizations? How do you keep from spreading your resources too thin?
ME: Some things I really like about the End of the Tunnel project are that the initiatives are funded by subscriptions to The Tunnel newsletter, and that the goal is to use 98% of every dollar received through those subscriptions to benefit the people identified by each initiative. The sponsors can choose which initiatives they want to support and the focus is not just on people who have already lost their homes, but people on the brink of losing their home. The best part is that the people it helps are vetted to ensure the most successful outcomes for those who receive help. Beyond these, it is actually the public awareness. We educate people as to the many ways homelessness comes to exist, how money given through panhandling pretty much guarantees the panhandler is going to stay on the street. Plus, about the different types of people who are out there—tons of information that most people don’t really think about when they consider the homeless population—if they think about them at all.
FAUST: Cool. How do you subscribe? Can people just make a donation, or do they have to subscribe to the letter?
ME: The site will be littered with subscription buttons, so people can just click on any one of them to get to the subscription form. The safest thing to do is use a debit or credit card to set up the subscription. We bill the card every 4 weeks for $4.44 and that’s it. They can make a one-time donation if they want, but the subscription is the goal because then we have much better idea of what the budget is going to be every week and month and year. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll be glad to accept anything, but until we get the non-profit status set up, none of it will be tax-deductible, and obviously there’s a benefit to being able to write off your contributions.
FAUST: Yeah, why give to people unless you get something out of it too?
ME: Can’t blame them. One thing wealthy people have in common—they know how to minimize their tax liability. That’s why we’re really just pushing the buck a week subscription—the tax write off on that isn’t going to drop anyone into a lower tax bracket anyway.
FAUST: It must be rough making so much money that you wish you didn’t make so much money.
ME: Yeah. Poor bastards.
FAUST: Why $4.44 every 4 weeks? That’s more like a buck, a dime, and a penny a week.
ME: Yeah, it’s aggravating, but the companies that move money charge a fee to do what they do, so if we charged a dollar, weekly, to your debit card, they would take out something like 33 cents every time. I searched everywhere for a solution, but unless people set it up with their banks to make recurring payments every week, there’s just no way to avoid using the money transfer companies. So, since they take about 3% plus 30 cents per transaction, we make the thing $4.44 so the amount we actually get is 4 bucks every four weeks.
FAUST: That works.